I have used chroot with an entirely separate userland, including a complete set of packages, including browsers -- lynx, dillo, firefox, konqueror, and epiphany.

So yes, it can be done.

Why? In my case, it is for building LiveCD images. These are -release. The environment is -current, which is close to but beyond -release. In this environment, the kernel is slightly out-of-sync with the userland, but only ahead by several weeks.

In that chrooted environment, the entire -release userland is chrooted. Consider it a "virtualized" filesystem hierarchy, without a virtual machine.